


Daria in "Les Enfants Terribles"

by Sab



Category: Daria - Fandom
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab





	Daria in "Les Enfants Terribles"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dariclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dariclone/gifts).



Upchuck takes the exit ramp too fast and they have to swerve to miss a half-ton box truck wheeling out of the Sears service driveway as the Mazda merges onto Duckworth, exit eight, Lawndale.

In the passenger's seat, Daria leans over to lace back up her boots.

"I spy with my little eye, something beginning with G!" Upchuck warbles.

"I'm sorry," Daria says. "I won't have time to puzzle this one to its satisfying conclusion, what with being seven blocks from my house, and I don't think it's fair to expect me to bear the suspense simply because I was time-challenged."

"Just guess a thing, Daria." Upchuck rolls his eyes. A semester at college must have done him right; he's mellowed considerably and had developed into what could only be described as genuinely tolerable for the entirety of the seven hour drive from Boston. "It's not such a big deal."

"Garbage," Daria offers, putting on her best good-sport voice. After all, Upchuck paid for all the gas and bought her a ham sandwich back outside Fredricksburg besides.

"Ah, close, my sweet, but yet so far." Upchuck waggles an eyebrow at her in the rearview mirror, and turns onto Gable street, past the church and the house where Brittany used to live.

"So what's your plan for the break?" Daria asks, and then promptly wonders why her mouth went ahead and acted curious when her brain so clearly didn't care. Still, Upchuck's winter break at Mass U happened to be the same as Daria's break from Raft, and he'd offered to drive, both ways. Civility was currency, and where Upchuck was concerned, better than any alternative.

"Well, I'm a college man now, Daria," Upchuck begins. "To the lowly underclassmen at Lawndale High I'm somewhat of an enigma, an international man of mystery, if you will."

"International?"

"If you will."

"I guess I might as well," Daria agrees.

"And if I can parley some of my newfound cooool into game with the young ladies, my work here will be complete."

"It'll be a Christmas miracle," says Daria.

"Hush, my sweet," Upchuck says, and they turn up Summit Street for Daria's house. "You might not have tried your luck on the Chuck-o-tron yet, but that doesn't mean your chance is lost forever."

"Good luck with the underclassmen," Daria says. "Hey look. I'm home."

Upchuck neatly tucks into Daria's driveway, but instead of turning off the car and getting out he leans on the steering wheel and gives her his most lascivious eyebrow waggle. "I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with G."

Daria looks down. "Green jacket."

"And the glorious globules lurking beneath," Upchuck drawls. Daria opens the door and gets out.

"Glorious globules. Parting words if I ever heard them. Thanks for the ride, Upchuck."

"And when shall I pick you up for our reverse sojourn?"

Daria sighs. All she wants to do is go inside, drop off her laundry, hug her mom, and call Jane. "Sunday at nine should be good," she says, not turning around.

Upchuck puts up very little fight, returning with a "see you anon, my sweet" and getting in his car and revving away. Daria walks up to her front door.

Somewhere in the middle of trying to figure out whether she should knock or try the knob or go under the mat for the key the door opens and Helen Morgendorffer, phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear, appears.

"MmmmDaria!" Daria's mother shrieks. "Eric, I'm going to have to call you back." Then, still clutching the phone, she throws her arms around Daria. "Daria it is soooooo good to see you my darling!"

Daria exhales as her mother crushes her chest, and her duffel knocks against her knees. "Mmf. Yeah. Hi Mom. Good to see you too."

Jake Morgendorffer's nowhere to be seen. "Where's Dad?"

Helen rolls here eyes. "It's the new car again. I swear to god that thing has caused him more trouble... he's at the mechanic expecting _me_ to come pick him up. I told him you were coming home and I didn't want to miss you --"

Daria cuts her mother off, because she fears if she doesn't she'll be stuck in the doorway for the rest of the night. "And looky here, you didn't."

"I didn't," Helen says, and hugs Daria again, and it's nice. She's been in Boston for three months and she didn't realize how much she'd missed her mother, Lawndale, the furniture-polish smell of her house.

But then that emotion passes and the hug's really gone on long enough. "Don't you have to pick up Dad?"

Helen sighs. "I suppose I should. He'll want to see you."

"That and he still lives here, right?"

"What? Who does?" Helen looks around. "Oh, yes, of course dear, your father lives here."

In any other family it might be cause for concern, her mother's absentmindedness on the subject, but for Daria it's just blissfully like being home.

Then Helen pushes on, stops, remembers she's holding the portable phone, hands the handset to Daria and continues out to her car. Daria figures her mother will remember the keys right about the time she goes to open the -- there we go.

A chuckle, a quick air kiss, Helen grabs the keys and takes off in the old blue Lexus. Daria goes inside.

"Quinn?" She's not really expecting an answer, and she doesn't get one -- seven in the evening is date time in Quinn world, and this being Friday Quinn wouldn't be caught dead at home with anything less than a major hairdo malfunction. Daria takes the stairs two at a time, tosses her bag on the floor and collapses on her bed.

Things you can't ask your dorm residential advisor for, it turns out, include padded walls. Not unless you want ten mandatory sessions with the campus psychologist despite constant and very lucid explanations of their artistic purpose and nostalgia value. Daria bangs her fist against the satisfyingly padded wall beside the bed, and it thumps and the noise is swallowed instantly.

She feels around on the floor for the phone, her eyes closed. Jane will be home, painting most likely, hopefully working on some of the stuff she'll want to bring to BFAC with her in January. When they go back to Boston together. Daria smiles, head hung upside down off the side of the bed. Daria and Jane back together again, after a frustrating semester at Raft surrounded by people like Jodie and Tom who worked really hard but didn't give Daria a chance to get to know them -- or maybe she hadn't given them the chance.

Her roommate, Nasha, was even decent, and planned to study psychopharmacology which Daria found both interesting and potentially useful down the line. But Nasha's friends were cliquish, and the bars they liked Daria found boring, and really Daria preferred studying in her room over going to the parties the campus events people threw.

Maybe with Jane she could take it, they could mock the posers in their turtlenecks having their pseudo-intellectual debates about critical theory and go into Cambridge for pizza and it would be good, it would be great, it would be like before.

She finds the phone and maneuvers it to the bed, dials Jane's number and waits.

"Sid's Bait and Tackle."

"Hey."

"Daria! Are you back?"

"I'm back."

"Come over! I mean -- well." There's some muffled talking in the background, probably Trent. "You should come over!"

Daria rubs her eyes. "Um, okay. Give me ten minutes."

"I can not wait to see you, lady," Jane says. "Make it nine."

Daria makes it to Jane's house in nine minutes, and Jane opens the door. Trent's there with her, and Quinn.

"Hi Daria," says Quinn with a shrug, before Jane can swoop in and wrap her arms around Daria.

"Mmmff," says Daria.

"I love you, you goober," Jane says, kissing Daria on the neck. "Welcome home!"

"How's college, Daria?" Trent asks.

"Full of useful facts and figures," Daria says.

"That's kind of what I thought it'd be like," Trent muses. "Kind of why I didn't go."

"That and you didn't get in to any colleges," Jane adds.

"Or apply to any," Trent says.

Quinn, fidgeting all this time, finally comes over and awkwardly puts her arms around Daria. "Um, hey, sis. Welcome home."

"Gee, thanks," Daria says. "What are you doing at Jane's?"

Quinn looks at the ground a little. "I come here sometimes," she says. "Jane and I sort of started hanging out this semester while you were gone. I mean with her not going to school or having a job or really anything to do --"

Jane thwacks Quinn good-naturedly, and that in itself shocks Daria cold.

"Wait. Jane, can you confirm this? You, spending time with Quinn, voluntarily?"

Jane shrugs. "She's not so bad. I mean, once you get past all the, you know, personality."

Quinn looks at Jane. "I should go, right? I should go home."

Jane raises her eyebrows. "Up to you. You can stay if you want. Right, Daria?"

No, Daria thinks. Not okay. Quinn, get your ass home so I can hang out with my friend. "Sure," she says instead. "That would be fine."

But Quinn might be savvier than Daria gives her credit for, because she goes and gets her jacket from the stand beside the door. "I have homework anyway," she says. "I better go."

"When Dad gets in tell him hi from me and I'll see him when I get home," Daria says.

"The new car again?"

"Apparently."

Quinn puts her gloves and scarf on and goes to leave. "Night, Jane," she says.

"Night, Quinn," says Jane.

"Night, Quinn," says Trent.

Later, in Jane's room, surrounded by Jane's latest works, a study in orange, Daria finally relaxes and just takes a minute to lie on Jane's bed and stare at that familiar ceiling and exist. Then the minute's up.

"So how's Raft treating you?" Jane asks.

"A lot like high school, actually, only I have my own room where I can go sulk and no parents breathing over my shoulder."

"No roommate? What about the unfortunately named... Nasha, was it?"

"Nasha's still around. She's not bad actually. We get along okay."

Jane comes and lies down next to Daria.

"My own Daria, making a friend."

Daria smirks. "One or two. And while we're on it, do you really have to hang out with my sister?"

"She's not that bad."

Daria sighs. "Yeah," she says. "I mean, I know she's not that bad. But I'm her sister, I have to love her. You're -- I mean, why'd she come to you?"

"Because you weren't here?" Jane offers softly.

"I was around for eighteen years," Daria says. "She could have come to me."

"And you'd have tossed her out on her ass. I know, because she did, and you did."

"Quinn told you that?" Daria's eyes narrow.

Jane bops her with a pillow. "No, you did, you nincompoop."

"Oh yeah," Daria says. Fair enough. "I don't know. I guess I just don't like someone else having a secret with my sister. Or, I don't like the idea of Quinn hanging out with _my_ best friend. Wow, I don't know which one of you I'm jealous of."

Jane chuckles. "It's understandable. But trust me, my relationship with Quinn has no bearing whatsoever on our friendship. Which is, say it with me, solid as a rock."

"Solid as a rock," Daria says. But for some reason she'll never be able to put into words, not even if she lives to be a thousand, she stands up and puts her boots back on, because she wants to go home and spend some quality time with her sister. "I think I need to go spend some quality time with my sister," she says, right out loud. This coming home from college business is apparently more complicated than she's been giving it credit for.

At home she finds Quinn in her room, doing, of all things, her homework.

"Since when do you do your homework?"

"Since I started thinking about going away to college, how great it's gonna be." Quinn closes her book. "You can come in, you know. I don't bite."

Daria comes in and sits on the bed. "I talked to Jane."

"Oh."

"Why do you hang out with her, anyway? I mean, does the fashion club approve of this commingling of species?"

Quinn rolls her eyes and for a minute is the spitting image of their mother. "Daaaaria," she says. "I don't have to do _everything_ with the fashion club _all_ the time."

Daria almost smiles. "Did someone finally hold that brain cell census and you realized you had sole custody of the fashion club's only entrant?"

Quinn snorts. "It's not like that," she says. "Jane and I do stuff I wouldn't want to _do_ with Sandi or Tiffani or -- it's just not like that, Daria."

Daria nods. "Okay," she says. "So tell me what it is like. You and Jane." Suddenly the three months since she'd been home seem like three years, three years that Quinn and Jane had to do stuff. Stuff without her.

"Well," Quinn begins. "You know how the fashion club holds its weekend unveiling every Monday? You know, where we get to show off all the stuff we bought over the weekend?"

"Naturally."

"So anyway, it was Monday, and Staci and Tiffani and I were about to do our pre-lunch walk through the caf but then _Sandi_ said we weren't doing our walk today, and Tiffani asked _whyyy_ and Sandi said it was because Staci's mom had _forced_ her to wear this sweater she got for half off because it was _last year's_ and apparently there'd been this big _sale_ or something, but obviously Staci couldn't be seen strutting in last year's sweater like she thought it was _in_ or anything, so then _Staci_ suggested that we sit outside with the hippies because next to _them_ our outfits would look _hot catour_."

"Hot catour, sure," Daria nods.

"So then Sandi and Tiffani and Staci went to sit at the picnic table and anyway that's when I saw Jane coming out of the art building with all that paint she stole."

"So I was right about the crime ring," Daria says. "I knew it."

"What?" Quinn blinks. "Daria, you're so weird. Anyway so I go, hey, Jane, and she drops everything and comes over and puts her hand over my mouth so I can't talk, you know, like you used to do?"

"Like I'm thinking of doing right now, you mean," Daria says. But her heart's not really in it. Instead she refolds her legs beneath her and looks at Quinn and tries to see her best friend's new friend instead of her sister, and instead just gets a blur of freckles because her eyes tear up. She looks away hard.

"So anyway the point is," Quinn goes on. "Jane says she'll buy me a pizza if I help her get all that stuff to her brother's gnarly van, and really Daria I didn't want to sit out there with the hippies and come in smelling like patchouli all day, so it seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time. And that's how it happened."

Quinn smiles, proud of herself. Daria blinks a couple times.

Then Quinn tips her head to the side. "Jane's so pretty, isn't she, Daria?"

Daria is taken aback. But then it's not like it's a trick question or anything. "Yeah, she's pretty," Daria says.

"Did you know she's a natural blonde?" Quinn goes on. "I mean, the collar doesn't match the cuffs or whatever. She _dyes_ her hair."

Daria, who knew that, just takes off her glasses and coolly, calmly wipes them on her shirt. The images in her brain are new and unfamiliar and if she just sits very still for a moment, she thinks, they might go away.

"Did she tell you that? Or did you --" Daria doesn't want to finish that sentence any more than she wants to know Quinn's answer to it.

Jane is very pretty, and Daria's thought more than once that she might look nice if she ever let her hair grow out. Not that she'd ever say such a thing to Jane, of course, because that would be putting stock in personal appearance and that was a tradition so un-Daria as to threaten her whole reason for being. Plus it would royally freak Jane out.

"I always suspected about Jane." Quinn is still prattling. "The lesbian thing, not the dye job. I mean, I suspected that too, we _all_ did, I remember Sandi saying like three whole years ago, that girl Jane dyes her hair, but that's not the point."

"It's not," Daria agrees. Lesbian thing. "Lesbian thing?"

Quinn's the image of Helen Morgendorffer again, sighing. "Yes, Daria," she says. "So when she asked to paint me, I was like, duh, ask me up to see your elflings, it'd be subtler."

"Elflings?" Daria raises an eyebrow. Quinn just plows right on.

"And it's not like I was embarrassed to pose in the nude or anything," Quinn says. "But all of a sudden I was... I don't know." She shies off and looks away, and Daria starts paying attention again.

"Jane asked to paint you?"

Quinn looks up. "Yeah."

"That day at school, right there, she said, come back to my house and let me paint you?"

Quinn thinks a little. "Actually, I think it was more like, wow, Quinn, I never noticed the way the sunlight illuminated your natural essence before. I _must_ capture it on canvas!"

Daria's willing to believe anything right now, but that's going too far. And yet. Four years of friendship and Jane had never once asked to paint Daria. Then, Daria had never once told Jane she'd look good blonde. Maybe it just wasn't in the stars for them, real closeness. Maybe Quinn, under her beach coral lip glaze and natural bronzing powder somehow touched a part of Jane Daria was too cold or too closed-off to reach. Maybe she hadn't been a failure as a big sister; she'd been a failure as a best friend.

"That's enough," Daria says. "I really don't want to hear this anymore."

She gets up, straightens her skirt, puts her glasses back on and heads back to her room. Then she stops, turns around, and goes back.

"Do you guys ever talk about me?" she demands.

Quinn flutters her eyelashes. "You?" She pauses. "Not that I can recall."

Daria, unsure whether this was the answer she'd been hoping for or not, turns around and goes back to her room and doesn't come out, even when her father gets home and begs her to come look at photos of the new car. "The real thing's back Tuesday!" he promises, but Daria doesn't even open the door.

For weeks she'd been looking forward to coming home, to installing herself back in Lawndale with Jane and her family for a good dose of just-like-it-used-to-be, and now it was all ruined. Her best friend and her sister finding common ground wasn't something Daria had even thought to worry about, not in eighteen years of long nights of worrying, and now she wonders what she'd done, what lapse of social grace she'd had that sent her sister looking for a replacement the minute Daria left town.

Quinn isn't there when she goes down to breakfast.

"Oh, I'm sure she's at Jane's," Helen coos, not looking up from the newspaper. "It really is nice having you home, Daria."

"Ah to be in the bosom of family," Daria agrees, and takes a Pop Tart, and goes outside to walk to Jane's house.

Trent lets her in, and she goes upstairs where Quinn and Jane are talking in hushed tones with their heads very close together, and they stop as soon as Daria comes in.

"Oh, hi Daria," says Quinn.

Jane gets up and goes to the trouble of actually giving Daria a hug. "Hey Daria," she says.

"Good morning to you both," says Daria. And because she's using her best formal voice, Quinn and Jane both sit very attentively at the edge of the bed and listen. "That's all I've got."

Jane smiles. "It's okay, Daria." And Daria sees Quinn put her hand on the small of Jane's back, and the little hairs on the back of Daria's neck prickle because it starts to make sense, or maybe it always had. "We were just talking about how we really don't want you to feel weird about this. Or, bad about this or like we could possibly in any way replace you."

"Yeah," says Quinn, emphatically.

Daria sits down on the floor, crosslegged, and sighs. She's got a little of her mother in her herself, she thinks. Acceptance, resignation.

Then she smiles up at Jane and Quinn. "So, you two."

Quinn giggles. "Us two." And she goes and takes Jane's face in her hands and kisses her, before Daria can even close her eyes or duck or look away.

"Oh god," says Daria.

"Quinn," Jane complains, but it's good-natured and she's squirming, and Daria thinks, quite chivalrously, if she says so herself, and it surprises her, that Quinn and Jane make a pretty cute couple. "Not in front of Daria."

"It's okay," Daria says.

Jane disentangles herself from Quinn's freckled limbs and stands up. "No, no," she says. "You're only home a week, we're gonna hang. Quinn's cool with that, right Quinn?"

"Jaaaane," Quinn whines. "You said the three of us could hang out."

Jane looks at Daria.

Daria considers calling Upchuck and adding him to the bunch, make the gang truly horrific. But she smiles. "It's fine," she says. "I'm only home for a week and it makes sense that I should want to spend it with my best friend and my sister. And if I can accomplish both those goals at the same time it only promises more hours of fun-filled merriment for all."

"Go home, Quinn," says Jane.

Quinn stands up, pouting. She's grown another inch, it seems; she's taller than Jane now. "Really?"

"I'm gonna spend the day with Daria," Jane says. "Take her to the flea market --"

"Ew, flea market, have fun with that." Quinn backs away a little.

"Grab a pizza, maybe shoot some stuff with paint guns --"

"Paint guns?" This time Daria backs`away.

"-- and if it's okay with everybody I'll come and have dinner with the whole Morgendorffer clan. After that, what Quinn and I decide to do is nobody's business but ours. Deal?"

Daria's still not a hundred percent on the not calling Upchuck thing, but she nods. "Deal."

"Deal," says Quinn. "Your day sounds spectacularly boring. I'm going home to exfoliate."

And with that she leaves and Daria and Jane are alone together and it's normal, and it's nice.

"How come you never asked to paint me?" Daria asks, looking around at the study in orange that takes up most of the usable space on Jane's walls.

Jane shrugs. "Dunno," she says. "Those are Quinn. You like?"

Daria considers. "Yeah," she says, finally. "They are Quinn. I do like them."

"Thanks," says Jane, and she's knotting her fingers shyly and her slender hands are covered in paint.

"You're pretty," Daria says, fully aware of how dorktastic it sounds. "I mean, I get what Quinn sees in you. What Tom saw. Lots of people. I don't know."

Jane laughs, but she's blushing. "Thanks, wordsmith."

Daria sighs again. "I guess I'm just glad you're happy."

"I am," Jane says, and it looks like she really, really is. Daria decides not to ask what's going to happen in January when Jane moves to Boston. She also decides not to ask Jane what she sees in Quinn, because she's pretty sure she never ever wants to know. What will happen will happen, she figures. Instead she stands up.

"Want to go price some fleas?"

"2002's supposed to be a very good year," Jane says, standing up. "Flea-wise, that is."

"Interesting year, anyway," Daria agrees.


End file.
